Sunday, February 05, 2006

Super Bowl Sunday

I could not get access to blogspot last evening but it looks as if things are up and running this morning.

Well... here we are on another "Super Bowl Sunday." The ultimate "Lord's Day" for those who worship at the high-tech shrine of the great "Pigskin" week after week. While there is nothing wrong with sports per se, surely things are out of control when it comes to sports in our day. The levels of compensation the players receive and the preeminence they are given in the society at large are completely out of sync with reality. Even those who believe in the omniscience of the capitalist marketplace have to admit that when it comes to sports the capitalist gods seem to be driven more by excessive greed than any kind of fear or even common sense. These are, after all, only football players or game players of one sort or another. Athletics and sports are all great as far as they go but let's not fool ourselves about the their value and contribution in the great scheme of things!

I probably would not even be thinking along these lines if it were not for the fact that many churches will actually try and use "Super Bowl Sunday" as a kind of evangelistic outreach. Ah... what a brilliant idea! That way we can watch the game and actually convince ourselves that we are serving the Lord at the same time! No wonder revival tarries and the church is seen as increasingly irrelevant in this part of the world.

The fact is, that the church is most effective when it is different from the world! If we were really following the Lord Jesus we would be different, but our desperate attempt to appear like everyone else around us probably indicates that someone (or something) else holds our hearts.

This Sunday, forget about the Super Bowl and worship the Lord in the beauty of his holiness. A year from now most people, including most sports fans, will have to stop and think about who was even playing in the big game. As Christians we should be interested in him who said: "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away" (Matthew 24:35). Energy expended in his cause is never in vain.